Rule-based troubleshooter design for the maintenance of manufacturing devices

Rule-based troubleshooter based on zone-oriented design method is proposed for the maintenance of manufacturing devices. Through this approach, the behavior of manufacturing devices is classified into normal and abnormal operations under the State/Attribute/World/Zone (SAWZ) architecture. For the normal operations, a rule-based supervisor based on Hierarchy Transformation Method (HTM) is used to control the behavior of manufacturing devices. For the abnormal operations, the behavior of manufacturing devices is classified into four zones: quasi-normal, traceable, alert, and chaotic zones. The detection of normal and abnormal operations is done by a world-based monitor. The rule-based troubleshooter design depends upon the characteristics of each zone. In this paper, this rule-based troubleshooter design method is applied to improving the performance of a mold filling system.